Quid Pro Quo is Latin for an exchange of goods or services, where one transfer is contingent upon the other, like tit for tat. Status Quo upholds the existing state of affairs, same-old, same-old. NO QUO considers an uneven give and take, open to practices where making something out of nothing or any imbalance of expectations, power, materials or process can become a constraint as well as an opportunity. NO QUO suggests that instead of doing what’s expected, the status quo, design could be an act of going overboard and producing an excess of what’s required, or eliminating the thing altogether.

DesignInquiry 2015: NO QUO carries on DI’s “Decade of Agitation”: we agitate beyond the prescribed & patrolled borders of professional & academic design(s). Where do NO QUO relations exist and how does the designer respond? What is “counter” to “status quo”? How does NO QUO expand the conversation? What form does NO QUO take?

A COLLABORATIVE PROJECT.

Contact us at info@designinquiry.net and we will send you a questionnaire in which you may propose how you would like to inform/question/develop/inspire this year’s collaborative onsite NO QUO publishing venture/counter-project.

Work/sharing/planning will begin immediately. Skills and contributions will be fluid and vital; we’ll work together to explore and embody the topic’s inscrutable corners and spaces. Propose your approach and your point of view. We will contact you to indicate if your proposal has been accepted, i.e. expands the mix of contributions and agitations to NO QUO. Participants will be accepted until the very limited spaces in this [ production-oriented ] DesignInquiry fills.

DesignInquiry NO QUO
June 14–20, 2015
Costs: $1000 = Registration, Housing, Food; Some drinks are free.

—

References:

Stein, Maurice R, and Larry Miller. Blueprint for Counter Education. Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1970. Print.
O.P. Lyons and C.H. Healey, Publisher. The Wind (newspaper) Vinalhaven, ME.
Ono, Yoko. Grapefruit. Tokyo, Japan: Wunternaum Press, 1964. Print.
Ulrich Obrist, Hans. DO IT.